It's my dinosaur and his name is Barbara. Yes. HIS name is BARBARA. It was Barbara's choice, his name. I'm thinking he choose it because I gave him the choice of a name while I was going through a MADAME KOVARIAN'S NAME IS BARBARA phase. (It is, really. Madame Kovarian's first name is Barbara. Barbara Kovarian. She's a Doctor Who villain, for you people who don't know.) But yeah. Barbara the dinosaur. I think he's a triceratops, but who can be certain?

Anyway, Barbara keeps a record of all the little words I have that mean something else. Or... are just misspellings that I like and refuse to give. Some words are inside jokes. Some words are my own creations. Some words I use in sentences, forgetting that no one around me knows anything about the context I'm using those words in. I think one of you might know what Barbara truly is. Two, if Bob's friend Fred got a hold of this blog in some freakish accident.

I guess Bob and Fred are kind of words that belong under Barbara's keeping. More so are the others: Jota. Trailmix. Marshmallow Toast (which I am not!). Those are special. And can be used in certain circumstances but not in others. Some I've poached from other people, like Burger. Or Fredfredburger. Or Burgerfredburger. The list goes ON and ON and ON and ON.

Not all of the words are related to names though... There's this one, Nah, which was kind of invented by my social studies class. I'm STILL not sure what it means and it's been in use for close to a year now. Anyway, a couple of the guys in that class were, I don't know, awed, I suppose, by our teacher's intelligence and her overall control of the classroom. They gave her a nickname. Nah. And whenever the teacher called you out on something, or someone said something especially intelligent in response to something, the catcall would always be "You just got Nah'd!" I have yet to discover if Nah has any other meanings. But Barbara claimed Nah anyways.

Barbara has a whole section just for words stolen from OYAN. Oyan, is one of them. Although, Oyan IS technically a city in Nigeria... I'll use Oyan as a synonym for epic, sometimes. And then there's danves, which is just a cute misspelling of dances which got immortalized by the rather insane minds of the forum. Glomp also comes from the forum.

This topic is like... a sixteen pound burger than I've got no hope of wrapping my jaws around. So I'm just going to very abruptly state my distaste with New York State legalizing "same-sex" marriage this past weekend. Tell me, how is same-sex not as derogatory a gay or homosexual? How does same-sex make is sound so much better? How did this even become legal?!

I don't get it. I just don't.

I've got this history text book; it's for AP American History, which I'm taking next year. We've got this huge summer assignment, but what I'd like to point out, that in the back of the book are the Declaration of Independence and the U.S.A Constitution. And I wonder what our founding fathers would say. What funny anecdote would Benjamin Franklin come up for this situation we're in? But I get it. I realize the world has changed and we can't look back to those who fought to be the foundation to help us complete the third floor. No; we're the builders of the third floor in this nation. And... I don't know. How much longer is this great house going to stand? But yeah... I was making a point with the history textbook... That chronicles everything - okay, no, it doesn't - it covers much of what happened in our nation in the years since The New World was first discovered. And... I forgot what point I was going to make. So. I'm going to go on a different track now...

I got into some problems because of my views on homosexuality at school. One day, there were little cards people were signing, pledging to not look down on those people who are homosexual. I refused to sign. One of the girls manning the table was in my English class, and she got very, very upset with me. So upset, she refused to talk to me for half a year. I wasn't able to explain that I try my hardest not to judge people in the first place. I wasn't able to explain that one of my uncles is homosexual and it's not like I try and hide that. I wasn't able to get to see where I was coming from, because she was stuck in her viewpoint that I was being judgmental. We've since started talking a bit more, even getting along rather nicely, but the homosexual topic has been avoided at all cost.

And now... it's legal. Legal. Legallegallegallegallegallegallegallegallegallegallegal. But still wrong! I just don't get it... The vote was 33-29. 29 Democrats and 4 Republicans voted for the passing of the bill. 33-29. It wasn't a landslide victory, thankfully, but still. It passed. The bill is called "The Marriage Equality Act." It's so... frustrating. Marriage Equality. Marriage Equality! Frustrating. And I'm not even going to start ranting about divorce.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

I think Woodsworth would be offended. Well... not really... but I read my favorite Woodsworth – “We Are Seven” – the other day and was thinking about how poetry has been replaced. And I know this isn't really like me, but I watched this video live performance of a OneRepublic song and was struck by how they used stage presence and body movements to convey the whole mood of the song. There was this cellist that held the entire mood of the song in the elbow of his arm, and it was actually really fun to watch; the drummer and the singing weren't overly demeaning like normal rock/pop stuff.

There's this rap section in one of the OwlCity songs – and yes, I know OwlCity ain't that popular, but still, there's some sentimental value behind them for me – and I was just thinking about how rap music relies so heavily on the sound of the lyrics and how the words fit together. Rap is seriously modern poetry. So, yeah. I wouldn't want to be the modern Keats or Shelley or Colridge. I'm not normally a poetry person, as well as my dislike of most music, so... I don't know.

Where the world be without music? It's become so influential in our culture that I don't even know. I don't think anyone knows. Throughout the school year, when conditions have been appropriate, I've asked people if they'd rather go without music for a day or without internet for a day. While the results from the OYAN forum and a few of my more geek friends skewed the results a bit, the general opinion was that people would rather go without the internet for a day than without music. But... without the internet, we wouldn't have the influx of music that we have.

We truly live in an Information Age, don't we? It's hard to imagine that just a hundred years ago, messages were delivered with dots and dashes, trains, and ponies. And before that; ships, messengers. We have marathons because of the messenger who ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens with news of the war. Honestly, I don't think I'd run twenty-six miles just to get information to a city; much less would I want to run to New York City or Boston, 'cause that just wouldn't be fun. But today, we can pass information from Washington DC to Beijing in seconds. McMurdo to Paris to Sydney to Fairbanks to Moscow and back to McMurdo in a time smaller than an instant. I could be in Afghanistan, while holding a conversation with someone in California and Virginia.

And it's this Age of Information that really has led to the widespread appeal of music. That, and many people are lazy or spend too much time in the car and they don't want to read books anymore. Anyway... it's funny really, comparing the cultural greats of today with the cultural greats of years passed. I kept picturing Lady Gaga in this sword fight with William Shakespeare. And they're arguing in their respective languages, and Shakespeare keeps commenting on the scandalous state of Lady Gaga's outfit. He is considering on using her as a madwomen in one of his plays.

The media has changed so much in the advent of TV, internet, video streaming, cellphones, and all other manor of gadgets. I'm a writer, and I'm well aware that by the time I'm thirty, the novel industry will have drastically changed. eBooks? Screenplays for audio/visual stuff? While writing a novel is an impressive feat, I'm not sure it's going to do much in today's world. Which, I guess, is one reason I'm keeping half of a disinterested eye on the media business.

Stupid music.

It's taken over the world.

…

…

…

Keil. No. That does not make Justin Bieber a supervillian, and as he is not a supervillian, you don't have the need to go an destroy him. Quiet. Now.

Friday, June 17, 2011

You know, yeah, I didn't die. I just learned why TV series only have twenty-six episodes a season. Anyway, hi.

Hi.

Hi.

It's almost summer. I've finished four out of five exams and well, math's the only one left. I've completed my first year in school. Really. I have. I have. I have. I have! As you can tell; I'm back and I'm excited. The Kansas City trip is in eleven days. The VA reunion is after that, although, frankly, I'm not AS excited for the Virginia trip as I am for the KC leg of it. Sure, I love my family and everything, and it'll be great to see them, but... Kansas City!

It's the writer's workshop that I've been looking forward to since last year ended. It's... oh. I'm just excited.

Anyway, the soccer season's ended, I'm trying to focus on one of my stories – Shackles, because it's a pretty straightforward one, that I've already got five chapters done on it – and, well, yeah, lots and lots of writing.

And I'm reading a 1069 page (size 8 print) book, but I'll do a lot of that on the plane ride.

And, um, yeah. That's pretty much an update on me.

I'm watching America's Got Talent right now. It's in the audition phase, but some of it's really good. There's this girl who looks like Justin Bieber, well, no, she's twenty-two, so Bieber looks like her. She sang this song she wrote about being a Bieber look alike and it was hysterical. Keil had a field day. He has a new crush, by the way, for all you people who don't know his story, he is, um, not a Bieber fan.

Isn't it annoying how every talent show uses Lady Gaga's “Born This Way” as a talent show song? It's horrible.

Now there's a parakeet. It's laughing. The parakeet is laughing. It's... disturbing.

Parakeets.

Laughing.

Weird image.

Laughing.

Parakeets.

I like America's Got Talent. There's some crazy stuff. Normally I really don't like talent shows. And Sharon Osbourne is just... yeah. Howie's funny and the fact that the other guy has a British accent is just amazing. It's great.

More disturbning images. Grandmother playing rock. Creepy.

So...

So...

So...

Creepy.

Oh. Wow. They're playing bottles! That's awesome. I love the audition stages, cause, well, they do stuff quickly and you get a lot of everything and some really awesome complete whiffs. There was a talent show at my school. It was... laughable. There was this one boy who sang a song that even I knew, and he forgot the lyrics, so he just fudged it. It was... strange. Because he ended up just singing about apples.

Apples. I mean, honestly. Apples.

Snicker. Sorry. More mental images. I'm just... in a bizarre mood. And internet's out and everyone else is down at pickups for soccer, so, I've got no one to talk too. Hobbes is ignoring me, too. It's like I'm invisible. I was invisible during my soccer game yesterday, no one passed to me. Annoying.

I was proclaimed a professional rambler today. Half an hour of rambling and I didn't even mention writer OR Doctor Who. It was an amazing accomplishment. I mean, I rarely ramble that long without bringing up my two major rambling devices. And I'm ramblign now. And I'm gonna be quiet now. 'Cause I'm gonna go bug Hobbes and he's gonna hate me for it.